AustLit

George Ferrers Pickering was a journalist and newspaper proprietor. He was the son of English landscape artist George Pickering (ca. 1794-1857), and his wife Magdalen Lucy, nee Ferrers (d. 1860). He appears to have arrived in New South Wales in the early 1840s, after which he spent a brief period involved in pastoral pursuits. He married Mary Ellis at Parramatta in June 1844. He edited Bell's Life in Sydney from ca. February 1847 through until ca. 1868, and for a good deal of this time he was also the newspaper's proprietor (with various partners). In addition to his press and sporting interests, Pickering also had political ambitions. He unsuccessfully contested the seat of Camden East at the 1856 New South Wales Legislative Assembly elections, and in the following decade he won the seat of Goldfields North, which he held in the years 1865-1868. He was the father of long-time Sydney sporting journalist Rowland Ferrers Pickering (q.v.).